Beat cop to chief in a job he loved

Rocco Fragomeni retires after 32 years — only until Monday

Published 7:00 pm, Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Photo: SKIP DICKSTEIN

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North Greenbush Police Chief Rocco Fragomeni spends his last moments in his office Feb. 27, 2013 in North Greenbush, N.Y. as today he will retire and move on to the directors job at the Zone 5 Police Academy. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) less

North Greenbush Police Chief Rocco Fragomeni spends his last moments in his office Feb. 27, 2013 in North Greenbush, N.Y. as today he will retire and move on to the directors job at the Zone 5 Police Academy. ... more

Photo: SKIP DICKSTEIN

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North Greenbush Police Chief Rocco Fragomeni prepares leaves the building that he has entered for 32 years Feb. 27, 2013 in North Greenbush, N.Y. as today he retires and moves on to the directors job at the Zone 5 Police Academy. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) less

North Greenbush Police Chief Rocco Fragomeni prepares leaves the building that he has entered for 32 years Feb. 27, 2013 in North Greenbush, N.Y. as today he retires and moves on to the directors job at the ... more

Photo: SKIP DICKSTEIN

Image 3 of 3

North Greenbush Police Chief Rocco Fragomeni prepares leaves the building that he has entered for 32 years Feb. 27, 2013 in North Greenbush, N.Y. as today he retires and moves on to the directors job at the Zone 5 Police Academy. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union) less

North Greenbush Police Chief Rocco Fragomeni prepares leaves the building that he has entered for 32 years Feb. 27, 2013 in North Greenbush, N.Y. as today he retires and moves on to the directors job at the ... more

Photo: SKIP DICKSTEIN

Beat cop to chief in a job he loved

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NORTH GREENBUSH — When Rocco Fragomeni was a 20-year-old patrolman with the North Greenbush Police Department in January 1981, one of his duties was to make sure cattle did not wander into traffic on Route 4 from farmland that is now Rensselaer Technology Park.

Fragomeni, 52, who rose to become the department's chief, retired on Wednesday. On his final day, he reflected on the changes he has seen in 32 years in this fast-growing suburban town in western Rensselaer County.

Not only did the town swap bovines for the bits and bytes of high-tech companies, but police work was also irrevocably shaped by the advance of technology.

In the early 1980s, police officers wrote their reports in longhand, with an ink pen and multi-colored pieces of paper: blue for fire, pink for personal injury, green for general incident report and so forth.

"There was no hiding behind spell-check, so if you couldn't spell you just kind of slurred your words on the paper so it looked like you spelled it right," he recalled.

Today, patrol cars are equipped with laptop computers that have an app for sending text messages between the chief and his officers. "It keeps us from putting the real top-secret stuff out on the radio, like 'Do you want coffee?' "

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Fragomeni brought a sense of humor to his job and managed to keep it through the growing pains. The town's population rose from about 7,000 to more than 12,000 during his three decades and the police department grew with it: from three full-time officers and a few part timers in 1981 to 15 full-time officers today.

The police department's caseload has climbed from an average of about 300 calls a month in 1981 to more than 1,900 now.

Fragomeni was the town's fourth police chief (they were constables in bygone decades) and he is leaving to become director of Zone 5 Law Enforcement Training Academy in Schenectady, a move he says wasn't an easy decision.

"I've been teaching courses at Zone 5 for several years and the director was a job I wanted, but I was thinking a few years down the road. The job was open now, so I applied," he said. "I'm excited about the opportunity, but I'm also sad. I'm walking away from a job I loved."

Fragomeni and his wife, Tammy, a teaching assistant in the Albany city school district, will remain in North Greenbush, where they raised their two grown children, a daughter who lives in Louisiana and a son who is moving to San Jose, Calif.

Fragomeni worked on two of the more notorious cases in the town's history. There was the manslaughter conviction of town councilman John Ramahlo Sr., who placed a chloroform-soaked tissue over the face of his wife, Pamela Ramahlo, as she slept on New Year's Eve 1991.

In the summer of 1987, the body of 19-year-old Diana Deso of Albany was found in the Hudson River in the town. The murder was unsolved for 18 years until DNA testing helped crack the case.

On Wednesday, his last day of work, Fragomeni took calls from well-wishers and from members of the media seeking information about a man who allegedly struck and severely injured a pedestrian with the snowplow blade on his pickup truck on Tuesday night. The driver was charged with two vehicular assault felony counts and a misdemeanor DWI charge after he failed a sobriety test.

"You lose sleep on cases like that," Fragomeni said. "The driver was not an evil person, and we've been preaching don't drink and drive for many, many years. But the results are tragic and now two families, the victim and the driver, had their lives altered in negative ways. The emergency workers carry it with them, too."

Fragomeni says he has seen the best and worst of humanity on the job, experiences he will share while training the next generation of police officers.

"I want to be in the classroom as much as possible," he said. He'll start his new job on Monday. Bagpipers played at a going-away party as he left the police station for the final time as chief on Wednesday — armed with a quip, as usual.